Poland and the EU

Poland's emigration headache

BELGIANS must believe Siemiatycze is the capital of Poland, residents of this eastern Polish town like to quip. Those that are left, that is. Since before the fall of Communism Brussels has been the destination of choice for thousands of Siemiatyczans who seek work abroad. Accurate figures as to just how many have left are hard to come by, as people often retain Siematycze as their official place of residence. But it is clear that the real population of the town, at any given moment, is considerably less than the official figure of 15,000.

Poland’s Central Statistics Office estimates that 2.1m Poles are living abroad, most within Europe. That figure peaked at 2.3m in 2007, after which some people started to move back. Yet predictions of a mass return of emigrants as Western Europe slid into recession (whereas Poland did not) proved wrong. For the past three years, the number of emigrants has been rising steadily again. Alarm bells are ringing in Warsaw.

The largest number of expatriate Poles are in Britain, followed by Germany and Ireland. But there are sizeable contingents all over Western Europe and Scandinavia. Family and neighbourly connections mean that some towns develop relationships with particular destinations abroad, as is the case between Siemiatycze and Brussels.

Every Friday morning three coaches leave Siemiatycze for the Belgian capital. The driver of the state-run PKS service jokes bitterly that the biggest change capitalism has brought to the town is competition for passengers from two private companies. On board, those settling in for the 20-hour journey are all going either to visit relations working in Belgium, or to look for jobs themselves. All tell the same story: there is no work in Siemiatycze. Magdalena, aged 26, is considering joining her mother, who left 16 years ago and is working in Brussels, “as a cleaning lady, of course”.

Unemployment in Siemiatycze stands at 10.5%. That is lower than both the national average of 13% and the 14.6% average for the Podlasie Voivodship, where the town is situated. But to a large extent that is because people prefer to leave to than sign on as jobseekers in a town where positions paying more than the minimum wage of 1,600 złoty ($510) are rare.

Remittances have visibly benefited the local economy, however. “It’s only thanks to the emigrants that we still have jobs here,” says Alicja from behind the counter of a café by the bus station. Handsome new houses are seen all over town. Shops do a roaring trade during holidays, when crowds come back from Belgium to spend their euros on cheaper Polish products.

Yet Siemiatycze's residents are painfully aware that this is neither an economically nor socially healthy state of affairs. Some teenagers left behind turn to alcohol and drugs; older people are distressed to see their grandchildren born abroad. Like countless other Polish towns, Siemiatycze is slowly emptying out. Emigration is exacerbating a demographic crisis that sees hundreds of schools across the country closed every year.

Siemiatycze is an extreme example of a pattern that has been seen across Poland for many years: low-skilled workers from rural areas and small towns leave for low-skilled, but better paid, work abroad. From bigger cities, graduates and skilled technical workers are also emigrating, usually with a plan to save up for a few years and then return. The statistics suggest that it does not always work out that way.

Even so, Paweł Kaczmarczyk of Warsaw University’s Centre for Migration Research believes that in the future more and more of those migrants will move back to Poland. Economic uncertainty, he says, discourages them from moving back, but that should abate. The wage gap between Poland and Western Europe is steadily narrowing.

Mr Kaczmarczyk prefers to stress the positive aspects of the exodus. Some 90% of Polish emigrants have found work in their adoptive countries, he notes, albeit often below their level of qualification. Poles’ willingness to move around in search of better pay has shown, he argues, that a European labour market can exist. Such mobility, and attendant language skills, will be ever more valued in the future.

Employers value the skills and practices workers acquire abroad, but in many areas they are still faced with a stubborn problem: the salaries they offer cannot compete with those offered by employers in Germany and beyond. Anna Kwiatkiewicz of the Lewiatan employers’ confederation complains of a “skills drain” among technical workers. She says that if Polish workers can’t be lured back, the government urgently needs a pro-active policy to encourage immigration to replace them.

Poles increasingly bemoan the lack of a coherent government policy on migration in either direction. They are inclined to view the continuing exodus as a sign that their government is failing them—and less inclined to share the optimism of people like Mr Kaczmarczyk. For Poland’s politicians, smiling benignly on a phenomenon that brings the unemployment figures down will no longer do.

1. The total number of emigrants from Poland is 2.1 mln. Is this a small or a huge number? Obviously it must related to the population total which the author of the article is completely missing. Now, for those uninformed, all Polish citizens number 38 mln. What comes out is that 6-7% of population moved abroad. Compare this to the UK which has 10%, or Ireland which has 20% of population living abroad.
In reality, a single percentage digit of population living abroad is a norm in Europe.

2. The number of migrants from Poland has jumped sharply during 2004-8 after joining the EU. But notice these were the years of the peak of the period which ended in the Great Recession. There were unlimited job markets in places from Ireland to Greece, which are now mostly in ruin or recovering like the UK. Sounds unbelievable now but there huge recruitment shows in Poland then. Thus no wonder people have moved massively but as can be seen above they just made the numbers of migrants close to the normal for any open society.

3. "Brain drain" is a just catchy slogan when it is not supported by any numbers. The numbers show that well over 90% migrants from Poland are people from countryside and small cities in undeveloped regions without education. Poland is a country where still 20% population lives in villages. What the current migration is just a process ofr moving to the cities but this time the cities are in the EU. There is thus no brain drain, just a muscle drain which has no economic effect, In fact opposite is true, this is positive drain since finally a passive part of the population is acitvated.

4. One can say that the growth of the migration from Poland in 2004-8 due to the abnormal period of overeheated economy in the receiving countries. But how about last couple of years? The current migrants are to a great extent temporary, they know very well that it is impossible to plan for stable future while working on minimal salaries. This is thus a 'temporary' migration.

Approximately 100 000 people emigrate from Poland every year, that might seem high but approx 300 000 people emigrate from the UK every year. So why are we discussing Polish emigration to Europe when there is a tidal wave three times that size heading out of the UK?

And worst of all, the majority of Polish emigrants are low skilled people who either have no job at all in Poland, or have a low paid job. I personally have never ever meat a person in Poland who has a good job and emigrates. Funnyly enough, most of the emigrants out of the UK are highly educated people who get good jobs abroad, like engineers, reaserchers, bankers and managers. Ask yourself a question, how many Polish dentists, doctors, scientists, computer programmers do you see abroad? And how many street cleaners, dish washers or bag handlers do you see? So who is emigrating? To me it seems the UK is having a brain drain. You only need to read a few English (oops, sorry, British) papers to see the intelligence there.

And anyway, if i was to ever emigrate, the UK would probably be the last country i would ever emigrate to. With bad weather, with lots of crime, with high taxes, with agressive people, with a terrible education system, with no industry and a corrupt government, hell only the idiots would want to go there; oh wait, they do!

"Employers [...] are still faced with a stubborn problem: the salaries they offer cannot compete with those offered by employers in Germany and beyond. Anna Kwiatkiewicz of the Lewiatan employers’ confederation complains of a 'skills drain' among technical workers."

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And that is precisely the point: the problem is not so much a "brain drain" (of university graduates who might or might not become the next Marie Skłodowska-Curie, spending her professional life mainly in Paris instead of Warsaw;)), but the fact the pool of skilled labor (with a university degree or without) has been drained nearly completely over the last 5-10 years, which greatly diminuishes business prospects for Polish companies.

A Polish friend of mine is site manager for a large Polish road construction company in Western Poland, and while the construction sector is booming thanks to large EU transfers for infrastructure and even though he's rising through the ranks quickly, he's considering applying abroad because Polish construction companies "are falling apart", as he puts it drastically.

As he explained to me, so many qualified people have left that most Polish construction companies now have difficulty providing the services asked for in public tenders -- so they have to partner up, often with western companies, and lose part of the deal.

I have made similar experiences in other branches, and I would argue that - while it was good for individual Poles - full liberalization of the EU labor market came at least 5 yrs too early for Polish businesses to compete.

> Poles increasingly bemoan the lack of a coherent government policy on migration in either direction [...] their government is failing them<

Precisely so. Poles are deeply frustrated. On the one hand Freedom, including freedom of movement was a dream worth fighting for in the dark age of real communism and shortly afterwards, and it is an over-riding value which Poles still believe in. On the other - the permanent departure of (especially but not only) educated Poles is a loss and to many Poles leaving to work are deeply frustrated that they have to do so.

Then there's a problem of low fertility of Polish women... in Poland. Polish women in eg. UK are among having the most children.

So the government has all the trumps at hand:

a society of highly educated and/or eager to work people, the first group highly creative in their fields of expertise

women eager, more! happy to give birth and raise children

advantageous economic/political situation internationally - as never in the history.

Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusan citizens ready to start working/settle LEGALLY in Poland, and fill the gap as they already do, without the need to pretend they are on tourist visits.

What more is needed to close the income gap and 'state friendliness' gap in the degree when migration for work would not make sense for average Jan Kowalski? He does not need to earn as much as in London to stay in his Siemiatycze.
Being very ambitious and ready to travel for better wage/more promising job he would prefer to travel to nearby, Polish-speaking Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Wrocław etc.
The jobs will be there, and quickly - Poland is still a services desert - once the promises of low and STABILE taxes and rules are set and sticked to.

Wasn't Donald Tusk's promise in election time when I first voted for his party 6 years ago, the badly needes stopping the exodus and making Poland a state friendly to citizens? Weren't low taxes a promise for enterpreneurs?

What more is needed to construct a family-friendly environment, promoting the families with many children? Wasn't it Bronisław Komorowski's aim to PUSH for that when he was applying for the job in Belweder?

That's exactly the feeling among many Poles, from the rich, investing-prone groups, through middle class to those who have just their two hands to deal with the world - the government is failing them.

I am a graduate of two public universities in Poland. I have both MA and BA degree. During my studies I had internships in several companies. I speak both English and German.
After finishing university I struggled to find a job for 3 years. Yes, three years. I have sent out hundreds of CV's, I have delivered CV's by hand. I went into companies asking for jobs. I phoned recruiters. Unfortunately my family has no connections, so there are no jobs for people like us. And after three years, my grandmother died.My parents inherited a small amount of money, but enough for them to buy me a ticket to the West, and leave a bit for food and rent.It took me 1 month to find a job in the West.I will never go back to Poland, and I urge any other Pole to stay. Poland is dead.
I have studied political science and history, and it is obvious to me that the West has turned our country into modern version of a colony. We provide the west with cheap labor, while our industry and economy has either been destroyed or taken over by western corporations. All of our elites are in pockets of one foreign power or another, and the few that might strive for independence(which is impossible anyway), are either ridiculed or inept.
There is no hope for Poland.
Since CIA-funded Solidarity won in 1989, and ruthless "reforms" have been enacted in 1992 Polish unemployment on average was around 15% since 20 years(!). Don't believe me?
Just look at official statistics about unemployment.http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/5840_677_PLK_HTML.htm
I repeat Poland is dead, and will stay that way. We have been defeated and crushed as a nation, our elites are either corrupt, inept or dead.Do not return. Only poverty and despair awaits in Poland.

For how long have you been living in Germany?
I happen to work in a field which employed Eastern Europeans before these countries joined the EU and I also happened to work in other European countries than Holland as well. I'd tell you the following: you will never go back to Poland if you live in Germany 5 years or so, due to the same dynamic I see in Holland as well as in other Western countries:
1. In the beginning, Eastern Europeans come for higher wages. Most of them are beter educated and work harder than the local population. (Be it Holland, Italy or UK).
2. Within 5-7 years they learn the language, integrate and gain the appreciation they deserve. At this point - being integrated - they have different expectations from a society than in the beginning.
3. After 7 years in Western Europe, you don't care only about your wage but also about how the city you live in looks like, weather the place you live in is corrupted or not, weather the air is clean, weather you can trust the food you buy, weather the trains are safe and ride on time, etc.
This being said, I think it's good for Western Europe that the labour markets enlarges,(unlike many of my fellow citizens). The Eastern governments will do nothing to keep people from emigrating. Their own children dream of studying or working abroad!

This is typical example how loosers create their psychological compensation by invoking conspiracy theories. They claim to be educated, yet they have no useful skills so they blame western companies and the CIA on their fate. They were dreaming about permanent govenment job in politcal science but they have to work night shifts in warehouses. So they compensate by shouting 'Poland is a colony' and it is 'dead'. While obviously it is an enormous success story in transition from communism to open market economy. For loosers however, it is really bad since there is no plenty of jobs for political science degree holders. If anything, this proves that in reality economy in Poland is not going the way of Greece, Portugal, Spain and others which is very healthy indeed. And by the way, unemployment in Poland is so much lower than in those countries.

Since we are on the issue of emigration, i would like to adress also the issue as to why these people are not going back to Poland. Well, if you ever ask somebody why he doesnt want to go back, normally he will say "because i have nothing to go back TO" The problem however is that it is not true. The real reason why people are not going back is not because they have nothing to go back TO but rather because they have nothing to go back WITH.

In the 70's or 80's or even early 90's you could go to a western country and earn 50-60 times as much as you would earn in Poland. So people were going west, spending 7-8 years there saving big money and going back and opening up hotels, restaurant, guest houses etc.. And they were clever too investing in Places like Zakopane or Sopot. Now they are all rich.

But if you emigrate now, youll be lucky if you earn 3 times as much as in Poland but then you have to take into account the massivly higher cost of living there (and plz dont tell me the cost of living is the same, thats rubbish - you try to survive in Paris for 1600 PLN a month - you'll starve to death) So the wages are relatively low, the cost of living is high and in many cases there is no job stability. The result is people cannot save any big money, or if they do save it will not be worth very much in Poland. So they have nothing to go back WITH.

Hence the immigrants you see now are not going back! Its not they have nothing to go back TO, as they claim, but because they have nothing to go back WITH - because the west is not rich anymore! Soon these people will not be able to afford to even go on holiday to Poland, not to mention actually investing there.

It's not just the unskilled that are leaving, far from it, as Ms Kwiatkiewicz rightly points out. And it's not the shortage of organizations like Lewiatan, which are full of experts saying seemingly wise things and having no apparently positive effect.

There is also most certainly a brain drain, that is why nincompoops like the one from the Warsaw University’s Centre for Migration Research can say the things they do.

TE should remember that under communism Poland was something like the 11th most industrialised nation in the world. Of course the devil is in the details, e.g. Poland was the major producer of essential parts for Soviet tanks, and the shipyards worked around the clock for the same customer - but why did virtually all of it have to go? How come it was sold off and ordinary Poles got zilch? However strange the arrangement might have been (Western, e.g. British colonialism was also pretty strange), this was still something a new and democratic Poland could build on? Germany hung on to her industry and now rules the EU.

Part of the problem arose when the entire communist bloc rightly lost faith in the centralised economy, but then made the most foolish mistake of trusting Western experts like George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs (came over to Poland in 1988, iirc). That was a very bad start, and then it only got worse, when the current Polish establishment worked up an appetite for a bulimia type of greed.

One thing is certain, it's not a problem with ordinary Poles. The "experts" are also fretting about demographic decline, yet why are planes flying between Poland and the UK so frequently full of Polish parents with very young children?

"Poland is an awesome modern European country with rapid convergence on rich world incomes."
It's obvious that you never lived any real life in Poland, maybe besides tourism for rich, or as a child from elite.
Most people in Poland are lucky if they have a job, and even if they have one, they barely can afford rent and food.
Polish growth is nothing remarkable, just like in African countries, growth is easy to gain in impoverished regions using mass cheap labor to attract foreign investment.

Yes, Ukraine is in a terrible economic state. Where Ukraine was once as affluent as Poland, it is now an order of magnitude poorer. That's thanks to relative isolation from world markets - Ukraine hasn't yet engaged in free trade with Europe & developed countries, nor has it reformed its institutions as in Poland, Slovakia, Estonia or Romania.

Yes, in 2012 21% (€12.3 billion) of Ukraine's exports went to Russia. But 24.6% (€14.6 billion) of Ukraine's exports went to the EU. And the greater balance of the rest went to countries with which the EU has free trade (Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, South Korea) or is negotiating free trade (US, Japan, ...).

In the first 8 months of 2013, Ukraine's exports to Russia collapsed by 25% viz-a-viz the same months in 2012. (Just maybe, that has something to do with Russia imposing dozens of illegal restrictions on Ukrainian exports, breaching both prior treaties and WTO protocol). While exports to the EU and rest of world have grown strongly.

Ukraine's general economy is a mess - yes, Ukraine will need loans and aid (the EU already makes a couple of billion euro available annually; it would seem that both the EU and US are now working behind the scenes to ensure that IMF money is made available). Longer term growth and prosperity will require opening to trade with the developed world (EU association makes a good start there).

Ukrainians can perhaps console themselves slightly with life expectancy rising 2 years above Russia's. Now the question: do they want to follow Poland's path towards West European life expectancy (i.e. 13 years longer than in Russia)?
https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:UKR:RUS:POL#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:UKR:RUS:POL:CZE:SWE:ESP:ITA&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

Ukraine has been passing regulation to facilitate the association agreement, and some good faith provisional market opening has happened on the EU side too (far more would come with the actual association agreement). E.g. the EU is now Ukraine's largest wheat export market (and a very profitable one); EU markets have been open (tariff free) to Ukrainian eggs and chicken mean since October 2013.

Obviously though, the much larger benefits would come with the actual association agreement, followed by further incremental progress towards institutional reform and integration in the world economy. Ukraine has phenomenal potential in aerospace, nuclear engineering, petrochemicals, advanced steels, construction, etc. There is massive trade and investment opportunity, with the potential to add greatly to productivity and prosperity in Ukraine (and little things, like mass-market affordable access to the world's best consumer electronics).

It's not even an "either-or" situation. If Ukraine chooses trade integration with Europe and institutional reform, that also sets Ukraine on the rapid path towards trade integration with other developed world markets. And it is in Russia's interest to (eventually) do the same. Forget the bluster; get ready to stomach a few body blows from Russia as Putin attempts to assert political control over Ukraine; but if Ukraine survives the knocks, Russia will soon be back at the table looking to improve its trading position with (a more open) Ukraine (just as is the case with, say, Poland; even more so in the future as gas prices fall and Putin needs other sources of revenue).

Ukraine has problems, yes. But Ukraine's problems are precisely what the association agreement is designed to begin solving.

Engagement with Cutters' flawed view:
"Shaun, the rapidity of growth in Poland is derived mainly through EU spending."
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No, Poland's growth is not based primarily on EU spending. Net EU spending in Poland (mostly transfers to support the mass construction of modern highways & infrastructure) is just over 3% of Polish GDP (a large share of the public investment budget, but clearly not everything). Rather, Poland's growth comes from rapid productivity convergence towards West European levels, access to world markets, massive investment by both domestic and international private businesses, from excellent education outcomes, from improving infrastructure, from rapid improvement in government institutions and more broadly from integration in the European and world economies.
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Here are a few different (each biased in its own way) illustrations of the Poland:
.https://vimeo.com/52926510
.https://vimeo.com/32251144
.https://vimeo.com/46586255
.https://vimeo.com/75925394
.https://vimeo.com/45956727
.https://vimeo.com/34508071
.https://vimeo.com/68443565
.https://vimeo.com/29184991
.https://vimeo.com/37384527
.
Obviously, beyond these fun videos, Poland is an awesome modern European country with rapid convergence on rich world incomes. I can't really grasp where Cutters' kind of prejudice comes from.

If you want to work in Poland, you should study something that is in demand in Poland.
Before starting studies, people don't wonder if they will have a job after graduation and later complain like you.

1. In 1993 one of your ministers (Lewandowski) sells modern factory for $120MM and since then the same factor generates EBIT of $160MM EVERY YEAR for new owners (global corporation) leaving small amount of taxes in Poland?

2. None of communistic nobles were prosecuted nor punished and we had Polish version of Pinochet (Jaruzelski) and Himmler (Kiszczak)?

3. It costs over 12MM EUR to build 1km of the road in the flat terrain?

4. In Catholic countries, people are being humiliated because of their origin, race or social class?

5. It takes you over 6 months to get all permissions to start the business?

6. The interpretation of law depends of people's mood or personal opinions and varies between tax offices or courts?

7. Your country has the modification of constitution given by other regime (Stalin)?

8. There's the highest % of students in EU, but only few get professional qualifications or useful skills?

9. The nation of almost 40MM people DOES NOT have it's own national products - not even one brand that could be associated with them?

10. After 45 dark years of communism, people voted TWICE for former Communistic Party clerk (Al Kwasniewski)?

11. People go to church, but they behave like they don't believe in God and never heard about human rights?

12. Police is set-up to collect tickets and generate budget revenues. The more tickets and crimes, the better for local chief, so that you can get prosecuted by having a beer in your hand in the public place?

Please, tell me if above are possible in your countries and you will know why I left Poland many years ago.

Poland needs help from outside, because local government's inability to run the state is visible even from Singapore...

Normally it was Moscow or Berlin or Vienna that was running Poland, because Warsaw is not capable even to deal with it's own problems having over 700 deputies.

With the Ukraine economy going down the drains, and the Ukraine credit ratings cut to BIG JUNK due to anticipation of Ukraine losing its principal market Russia, poor impoverished Poles will find stiff competition by the Ukraine mass emigration.

Expect yet another 5 million Ukrainians to run away of their sinking country, much what happen during the cleptocratic rule of the US-installed orange mafia, when the Ukraine economy nosedive worst not only amongst the Europe but also amongst the CIS economies and Ukraine was transformed into a cheap sex tourism destination for the western owners of the orange mafia.

The downgrade is the latest blow to the government of President Viktor Yanukovych at a time of increasing economic difficulty and tense relations with giant neighbour Russia over Kiev’s EU integration ambitions.

The agency lowered its long term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Ukraine to ‘B-’ from ‘B’, with a negative outlook, it said in a statement.

This list indicates somebody with psychological profile of a looser who compenstaes by adhering to populism, demagogy and nonsense . Suffice it to say the list is a mixture of craziness and lies plus personal fixations.

For example, establishing company in Poland takes 6 months? This is absurdity.

Or, police collect tickets for having a beer publicly?

And in the end we have this: "inability to run the state is visible even from Singapore".

Hmm, in Singapore rules are much, much more stricter than in Poland:).

fromGdansk is an excellent example of the 'post-communist' way of thinking, typical for large segments of populations in Eastern Europe. On one-hand there is this brainwash of communist largesse "we were industrial power then" and on the other hand the communist instilled conspiracy theories about the mythical West as the source of all evil. This is used by populists telling they could do it differently and make everybody rich quick. From this mixture there come those simple-minded prescriptions how to do it, like e.g.: "Germany hung up on her industry and now rules the EU". Which for anybody with a bit of unwashed brain is patently stupid as the industry in former communist East Germany is a glaring example how it has been completely cleaned up. Germany indeed hangs on industries, but on the level of BMW or Porsche which obviously rule but in their market segments. The poor mind shortcut here is that supposedly in the communist Poland there were also such BMW-class industries but they were destroyed by the Western conspiracy. While in truth communism was not even an economy in normal sense. But from poor poisoned minds comes nonsense thinking.

One thing worth to mention is that economically Poland is a country with big distransparencies. First, there is Warsaw with a very good job market (especially in IT and finance). There are also other bigger cities, like Wroclaw, Gdansk, Poznan or Krakow with average job markets, although the situation is improving thanks to BPOs coming to the cities. Ok, that is not the most ambitious job but rather well-paid and better than being unemployed. But there are also rural areas where situation is bad - if you are well-educated you should not look for a job there. I have many friends from university who live in Warsaw and are rather satisfied with their job and do not have any intention to move abroad.
Myself I am currently living in Germany and working as IT analyst. My motivation to move was mainly to gain international experience and see how it is to live in another country.
In my opinion if you are well-educated you will find good job in Warsaw (not in Poland, in Warsaw) with salary comparable to Western one (in terms of comparison to cost of living, of course Polish salaries are lower but life is less expensive). Also in a long term it is always easier to work and live in your country. Also being East European and working in Western Europe you will often have to cope with stereotypes because for many people as a Pole/Czech/Hungarian you will only be able to work as cleaning lady or on construction site.
That is why I believe many well-educated people would like to come back (including me, maybe not tomorrow but in some time) but what really makes difference is general quality of life, that is not related to your salary, so level of infrastructure, medical services and so on. That is actually needed in Poland to attact brains to come back.